This month marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ironically, this comes at the very moment that the capitalist system is celebrating having narrowly escaped falling into a similar abyss. The financial crash and the decline in output a year ago, following the collapse […]
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The Penal State in an Age of Crisis
By John Bellamy Foster on June 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
As a rule, crime and social protest rise in periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. During times of economic and social instability, the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the general population, more disposed to adopt harsh measures to safeguard their positions at the apex of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the economic growth […]
Capitalism in Wonderland
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In a recent essay, “Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution,” in one of the leading scientific journals, Nature, physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, a researcher for an investment management company, asked rhetorically, “What is the flagship achievement of economics?” Bouchaud’s answer: “Only its recurrent inability to predict and avert crises.” Although his discussion is focused on the current […]
The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
On the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that led to the Great Depression, the United States is once again caught in a Great Financial Crisis and deep downturn of an order of magnitude comparable to the 1930s. At the center of this crisis is plunging consumer spending, caused by the destruction of […]
A Failed System
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In referring in my title here to “A Failed System” I do not of course mean that capitalism as a system is in any sense at an end. Rather I mean by “failed system” a global economic and social order that increasingly exhibits a fatal contradiction between reality and reason—to the point, in our time, […]
The Ecological Revolution
Since the atomic bomb made its first appearance on the world stage in 1945, it has been clear that we possess the power to destroy our own planet. What nuclear weapons made possible, global environmental crisis, marked especially by global warming, has now made inevitable—if business as usual continues.
A New New Deal under Obama?
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
With U.S. capitalism mired in an economic crisis of a severity that increasingly brings to mind the Great Depression of the 1930s, it should come as no surprise that there are widespread calls for “a new New Deal.” Already the new Obama administration has been pointing to a vast economic stimulus program of up to […]
Financial Implosion and Stagnation
By John Bellamy Foster on December 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
“The first rule of central banking,” economist James K. Galbraith wrote recently, is that “when the ship starts to sink, central bankers must bail like hell.” In response to a financial crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, backed by their treasury departments, have been […]
Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism
By John Bellamy Foster on November 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult problem of socialist theory and practice. To add to this the question of ecology might therefore be seen as unnecessarily complicating an already intractable issue. I shall argue here, however, that the human relation to nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. […]
Postscript to “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis” (Monthly Review, April 2008)
By John Bellamy Foster on October 25, 2008 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints, Translated
Six months ago the United States was already deep in a financial crisis — the roots of which were explained in this article. Yet, the conditions now are several orders of magnitude worse and are affecting the entire world. We are clearly in the midst of one of the great crises in the history of […]
